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The immunity has been signed so you are required to testify. If you dont testify, the state is probably going to ask me to jail you and Im probably going to do that, Glanville told Copeland.

Credit: Jason Getz

Credit: Jason Getz

Copeland told Glanville that he was going to testify.

After a lunch break, Copeland took the stand. ADA Simone Hylton began to question Copeland at that time:

Hylton: Do you want to be here?

Copeland: Im here.

Hylton: Let me ask you some questions, how old are you?

Copeland: Grown.

Hylton: What does grown mean?

Copeland: Im an adult.

Hylton: When you say you are an adult, what number in years are you?

Copeland: I plea the Fifth.

Glanville dismissed the jury and ordered deputies to take Copeland into custody.

Mr. Copeland, given the fact you have invoked your Fifth Amendment privilege but the state has already given you immunitythis court holds you in willful contempt and well see you on Monday, Glanville told Copeland.

Tempers flared after Chief Deputy DA Adriane Love questioned whose interest Melnick was representing.

Melnick told Glanville that nobody from the DAs office had contacted him about Copeland since June 2023, even though they knew he was Copelands attorney of record.

Theyve put us in this position, where at the last minute, Im trying to advise him, as best I can, what I think its best for him, Melnick told Glanville

Credit: Jason Getz

Credit: Jason Getz

Melnick then took exception to Loves allegation.

I owe nothing to anybody over here. I owe nothing to anybody at any of these tables. I dont, candidly and no offense, care what happens with their cases, Melnick said. The only thing I care about is what happens to Kenneth Copeland. For an assertion to be made that I or Mr. Copeland are somehow being influenced by someone over here is absolutely ridiculous, I take great offense to it.

Melnick would later say that he plans to report Love to the State Bar of Georgia for contacting Copeland, knowing he is represented by counsel.

Hylton told the court that they subpoenaed Copeland last Friday and he told prosecutors that Melnick was not his attorney. It wasnt until an email sent Thursday evening that they were made aware that Melnick represented Copeland.

Melnick told Glanville he wont be able to appear on Monday but advised that another attorney will appear on behalf of him to represent Copeland. He also told Glanville that Copeland intends to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege on Monday again.

Tempers also flared between Love and Young Thugs attorney Brian Steel. Glanville simply reminded both that they have professional obligations and should be professional toward each other.

Copeland, a YSL associate, is a key witness in the states case. His leaked interrogation video showed him speaking to Atlanta for nearly four hours offering to provide information about their yearslong gang investigation in exchange for leniency.

Copeland is mentioned in the indictment, but wasnt among the 28 alleged YSL associates charged. Copeland will be called to testify on Monday but its expected to be taken back to jail after exercising his Fifth Amendment right.

Love asked for Copeland to be held in jail until the end of trial if he refuses to testify.

Jury selection began on Jan. 4, 2023; opening statements followed more than 10 months later, on Nov. 27. Repeated delays, juror problems and time off has resulted in just over 85 days of actual proceedings, some conducted outside the jurys presence. Out of around 200 witnesses, less than 80 have been called to testify.

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Young Thug trial: State witness held in contempt, taken into custody - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Historical ordering aside, the Fifth Amendment is easily one of the top 10 amendments to the Constitution so good, in fact, that it inspired one of the best court sketch comedy bits. One of the many things it affords is the right against self-incrimination: no person can be compelled in a criminal case to be a witness against themselves. That said, the provision only activates when theres a consequence to being your own star witness. Once that worry gets waived, throwing up the Fifth is an easy way to get thrown behind bars for not listening. From AJC:

A major witness in the states case against Atlanta-rapper Young Thug and five of his alleged associates was taken into custody after Judge Ural Glanville held him in contempt of court for refusing to testify.

Kenneth Copeland, also known as Lil Woody, was subpoenaed to testify Friday morning. Before the jury was brought out, Copelands attorney John Melnick told Glanville that Copeland did not wish to cooperate or testify and planned to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Mr. Copeland, given the fact you have invoked your Fifth Amendment privilege but the state has already given you immunitythis court holds you in willful contempt and well see you on Monday, [Judge] Glanville told Copeland.

You can see the interaction for yourself here:

If youve been following the YSL RICO trial, you know that this thing has been shenanigans heavy since the start. Surprisingly enough, the short stint behind bars sufficed to get Copeland with the program:

Things seem to be normal for now but, given this trials history, something else will go wrong within the next appearance or two.

Young Thug trial: State Witness Held In Contempt, Taken Into Custody [AJC]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord in the Facebook groupLaw School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim,a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email atcwilliams@abovethelaw.comand by tweet at@WritesForRent.

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That's Not How Pleading The Fifth Works - Above the Law

Kenneth Copeland aka Lil Woody was arrested on contempt of court charges on June 7, 2024. He is one of the witnesses in the Young Thug/ YSL RICO trial. The rapper invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying against Young Thug and circumvent self-incrimination.

Copeland showed agitation after being called to the stand to testify, as reported by 11 Alive. When the attorney representing the state asked Copeland his age, he replied "I'm grown. I'm an adult." When the attorney asked him how old the rapper was in terms of years, he pleaded the fifth (refusal to answer questions).

This resulted in presiding Jude Ural Glanville directing the arrest of Lil Woody for contempt of court and excusing the jury. According to FOX 5 Atlanta, the judge mentioned that Copeland is ordered to testify on Monday.

Young Thug's arrest took place on May 9, 2022, and the rapper has been in jail for over a year and has been repeatedly denied bail. How Lil Woody came into the picture dates back to October 2021 when Copeland was arrested in Fulton County with a loaded gun in his car.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported that Copeland gave information to the police regarding future and previous crimes after his arrest and added that he would help get a confession from Thug.

Moreover, the video of Copeland's interaction with the police was leaked to the media. New York Times music reporter, Joe Coscarelli, filed a motion for mistrial after the leak. Young Thug's lawyer told Coscarelli that the release of the video harms his client, calling Copeland's statements "just stories".

In the recent hearing on June 7, 2024, Woody was arrested for wilful contempt, given that he was granted immunity by the prosecution in return for his testimony. Moreover, Judge Glanville began the proceeding by asking Copeland whether he was aware of his immunity, to which he agreed.

Ensuring that his immunity and duty towards testifying were important, the judge also stated:

After Lil Woody's arrest was directed, Thug's attorney Brian Steel filed for a mistrial claiming that Copeland pleading the Fifth Amendment was already known. However, Judge Glenville pointed out that Copeland refused to answer after agreeing to testify, denying the motion for mistrial.

Moreover, Law&Crime's X network (formerly Twitter) mentioned in a post that Copeland's attorney went back and talked to him after the incident and will have another lawyer appear on his behalf on Monday (June 10, 2024). However, Lil Woody intends to assert the Fifth Amendment again.

According to the Law&Crime Network, some reports suggest Lil Woody implicated Young Thug in a murder plot to protect himself from legal consequences, however, the claims are disputed by Copeland.

In other news, Young Thug is accused by Fulton County of co-founding and leading Young Slime Life, also known as the YSL gang. The charges against Young Thug include violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, participation in criminal street gang activity, and possession of a machine gun amongst other charges.

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Why was Lil Woody arrested? Rapper invokes Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination to avoid testifying in Young ... - Sportskeeda

As former President Donald J. Trumps criminal trial winds down, a center-left group is trying to goad the Republican presidential candidate into testifying.

Take the stand, Donald, or admit youre a coward, blares a new ad from the group, Third Way, which highlights Mr. Trumps past comment that if youre innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?

The five-figure digital ad buy is running in all the places Trump will be, said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way. He said the spot would run in New York, especially around Trump Tower and the courthouse, Mar-a-Lago, and in Dallas near the National Rifle Association meeting where Mr. Trump is expected to speak on Saturday.

He has talked tough for years about how only guilty people and mobsters take the Fifth, Mr. Bennett said. Now it appears hes going to do that himself, and we wanted to remind him of that and see if we could taunt him into testifying, frankly, because it might not go well for him if he did that.

Mr. Trumps lawyers told the judge Thursday that he had yet to decide whether he would testify. Mr. Trump has invoked the Fifth Amendment before.

Mr. Trump is charged in this trial with falsifying 34 business records related to the reimbursement of a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels. He has denied the charges.

The ad buy was first reported by Politico.

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New Ad Taunts Trump: 'Take the Stand, Donald, or Admit You're a Coward' - The New York Times

When a political fever runs hot among government officials, the Bill of Rights is often one of the first casualties. Few fevers have been as hot as the Democrats reaction to January 6.

It is no surprise, then, that the investigation by Democrat Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, like that of the Congressional Select Committee in 2022, obliterated a sacred norm. In this case, the chalk outline is around the Fifth Amendment.

I offer this observation as one who recently was compelled to appear in front of an Arizona state grand jury. The sole purpose is for me to repeat my prior invocation of my 5th Amendment right to remain silent in connection with an investigation into my service as an alternate elector for President Trump in 2020. This follows the shameful spectacle of Congress House January 6 Select Committee using footage from its investigatory video depositions to produce a slick TV show in advance of the 2022 elections to publicly shame Republican witnesses who invoked their 5th Amendment rights.

The Bill of Rights were inserted into the Constitution to protect our essential rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment applies them to the states. The Fifth Amendment contains powerful defenses against abuses of power. It includes the right to be indicted by a grand jury for serious crimes instead of at the whim of a prosecutor, prohibits the government from prosecuting someone twice for the same offense, guarantees due process when the government tries to take your life, freedom, or property, and requires the government to pay for any property it takes from you. The Fifth Amendment has one more essential protection: the government cannot force you to testify against yourself.

Importantly, the Supreme Court held in Grunewald v. United States that one of this privileges basic functions is to protect innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances. The circumstances involving electors in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election were indeed ambiguous. Alternate electors had been used in Hawaii in 1960, and the votes of John F. Kennedys alternates were ultimately validated long after the election. The day after the 2020 election, liberal commentators Van Jones and Larry Lessig published their opinion on CNN that Biden too should select alternate electors in Pennsylvania because Trump was leading in that states ballot count and the Democrats should contest the election.

Speaking of ambiguity, exactly what crime Attorney General Mayes is investigating was unclear from the face of the subpoena I received: It provided no notice of the authority of the Attorney General to convene this particular grand jury, no notice of the topic being investigated or the laws allegedly broken, and yet it said that I was a target of the investigation and must testify.

Concern that Mayes is overstepping her authority for political gain is not mere speculation. Before her election in 2022, she campaigned on her certainty before her investigation that Arizonas alternate electors committed a crime. Recently, Mayes declared that Democrat attorneys general such as herself absolutely have to get President Biden re-elected. With Arizonas elections only a few months away, consider that Arizonas investigation is somehow still ongoing nearly three and a half years after the events at issue, that other states and the federal government investigated and made their prosecutorial decisions long ago, and Mayes transparently told the press last year that, with regard to the investigation, Were going to make sure that we do it on our timetable.

For these reasons, though I maintain my innocence of any crime, I invoked my 5th Amendment right not to be compelled to testify against myself. Longstanding tradition and practice in both state and federal proceedings provides that once an individual subpoenaed by a grand jury informs the prosecution that the individual intends to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify, the individual is not compelled to appear before a grand jury for the purpose of invoking the privilege. And yet, I and other Republican witnesses were paraded in front of the grand jury solely to invoke our rights. This has rightly provoked the ridicule of both prosecutors and defense counsel.

There is no substantive evidence in the act of invoking ones Fifth Amendment rights. To force a witness to do so in front of the grand jury is an improper attempt to bias the grand jury and embarrass the witness. In some jurisdictions like the District of Columbia, a lawyer can be disciplined for forcing a witness to appear only to invoke their Fifth Amendment right.

The damage Democrats like Kris Mayes are inflicting on the 5th Amendment, and especially their normalization of its violation for political gain, is shameful and an affront to our Constitution. Repairing this damage must be a priority for Republicans this election year.

* * *

Jake Hoffmanis an Arizona statesenatorin Arizonas 15th district.

NOTE: DC Bar Ethics Opinion 31 is found on page 91 of the linked reference.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Originally posted here:
How Democrats In Arizona Are Damaging The Fifth Amendment - The Daily Wire